Sunday, December 12, 2010

My Stint As An Editor At The New York Slimes

Do the overhyped and overpaid coulmnists at the New York Times have editors ? Do they have someone who says "Let's back that up with some facts, Krugman" ? Do they have someone to say "Ann Coulter is right! Frank Rich really is a woman trapped in a man's body" ? Most importantly, do they have someone who says "Maureen! You're an opinion journalist, not a middle age cheerleader for the Democrat Party" ?

They do now. That person is moi, your Friendly Neighborhood Right Wing Extremist. Below is a column by Maureen Dowd, edited by yours truly. This is what her editor should have told her, instead of "You are wonderful, Maureen! No, I don't see any grey roots! Yes, I'll pick your order at Zabar's right away!"

At a Republican victory party suffused with vengeful glee, the man who body-surfed the anti-establishment wave to become the next Speaker of the House was looking very establishment. [Rewrite this. What about all of Obama's "We won the election rhetoric" ?]

Even though it was predicted, it was still a shock to see the voters [This sentence doesn't make sense, Maureen. Rewrite it.] humiliate a brilliant and spellbinding young president, who’d had such a Kennedy-like beginning, [No. Kennedy didn't have anyone chanting slogans that originated in the Communist Party.] while electing a lot of conservative nuts [There are no liberal nuts ? What would you call Dennis Kucininch ? Rewrite.] and promoting this central-casting congressman as the face of the future: a Republican who had vowed in a written pledge to restore America to old-fashioned values, returning to a gauzy “Leave It to Beaver” image that never existed even on the set of “Leave It to Beaver.” [ Brilliant ? This is the same the same guy who said he's visited 57 states on the campaign trail!]

Republicans outcommunicated a silver-tongued president who was supposed to be Ronald Reagan’s heir in the communications department. [Delete this. Ronald Reagan actually meant what he said. This guy has a teleprompter at staff meetings, for God's sake.]

They were able to persuade a lot of Americans that the couple in the White House was not American enough, not quite “normal,” too Communist, too radical, too Great Society. All that Ivy League schooling had made them think they knew better than average American folks, not to mention the founding fathers. [The American people didn't need a whole lot of convincing. Let's be realistic, here.]

The Speaker-in-waiting sounded the alarm: the elites in the White House were snuffing out the America he grew up in. It only took two years to realize that their direction for the country was simply, as he put it, “a contradiction with the vast majority of Americans.”

No one gets to take America away from Americans — not even the American president! [Maureen, whether you like it or not, we do have a Constitution. In that document, the President is not granted the power to take over car manufacturers, the US health care system, banks, or any other private entity. Are you sure you took civics in high school ?]

“What the American people were saying is ‘Enough!’ ” the Speaker-to-be told me, as he savored his own win and his party’s landslide, which he said was “a historical tide, not just a partisan election.”

Washington had not been listening. Washington had been scorning the deepest beliefs of Americans. And now that would have to change.

“American people are clearly fed up with what they see as the decay of American society,” he declared.

The new leader of the House took a more black-and-white approach than the nuanced president. It’s enshrined in the Declaration of Independence that you need the consent of the governed and the governed did not consent.

Ascending to third in the line of succession for the presidency: a working-class kid who rose in the House as a rabble-rouser willing to throw bombs to score points against powerful Democrats. [Rewrite! Are you trying to say Nancy Pelosi was not a bomb thrower ?]

Now he’d be helping to run the country, saving it from what he regarded as an arrogant and out-of-touch clique of elites.

In the revolutionary flush of the electoral map glowing red, he was floating, working hard to avoid gloating (even though Sean Hannity was around, gloating about the pain about to befall the Democratic president). [And the press didn't cheer on Election Night '08 ?]

But he could not resist taking a few jabs at the “liberal media elite” distorting things, and a few more at a puffed-up White House that got punished for not paying enough attention to people’s anxieties. [What in the hell did he distort, Maureen ? Did you not open this column by sininging hosannas to Obama the Redeemer and his supposed brilliance ? Do you even read what you write ?]

“They had an enormous opportunity to bring about change and they failed, and I don’t say that harshly,” he said, adding: “They really are left-wing elitists and they really thought the country didn’t get it, and, therefore, it was their job to give the country the government that they thought the country needed, even if they didn’t want it. That’s the whole history of the health plan.”

There was a lot of talk, as in the campaign, about the misbegotten health care plan, about balancing the budget, about lowering the deficit and taxes, about doing something on abortion and bloated government. Meanwhile, bloated fat-cat lobbyists were dancing down K Street. [Facts or examples would be nice, here. Add examples or delete.]

The next Speaker felt that the humbled president should take the election as a cue to be conciliatory, and he proposed they talk in the next few days. He offered to reach out to Democrats who wanted to work with his side, but also noted that the president would not be wise to stand in the way of the conservative agenda. [Rewrite! The guy is not Tony Soprano!]

“I prefer to believe that this president, who is clearly very smart, is quite capable of thinking clearly about a message sent by the American people,” he said.

He said that, contrary to what the media elite had been jabbering about, he would not use his subpoena power to rain down a series of investigations on the Democratic administration.

No “witch hunts,” he said. Only “legitimate” investigations. [Lose the quotes around "legitimate". Actual crimes have been committed, like the Romanoff and Sestak bribes to quit their races, who knew what when during the Blagojevich mess, and God knows what else.]

Yeah, that all worked out for Newt Gingrich. He really came through. The quotes above came from Gingrich, when I covered his heady victory in Marietta, Ga., in the 1994 Republican landslide that made him Speaker.

And, obviously, the Republican House only pursued “legitimate” investigations of Bill Clinton. Sixteen years later, as a weeping John Boehner extolled the American values he learned at his father’s bar — in the moment he dethroned Nancy Pelosi — the new crop of anarchic [Anarchic? What Conservative has called for the end of government ?] conservatives are saying all the same things.

God help the Republic. And, Mr. Speaker, in the immortal words of Sharron Angle, man up!

[See me in my office. We have a lot discuss. With what we pay you, we expect much, much more.]